The intercom buzzed and David was grateful for the diversion. It was Monica calling from the district attorney’s office.
“Can you come over, Dave?” she asked.
“Sure. What’s up?”
“I want to talk to you about Tony Seals.”
“What about him?”
“I’ll tell you when you get here,” she said with a trace of bitterness. “And bring your shopping cart. We’re giving the store away today.”
An arrow corridor led back to the depersonalized cubbyholes that passed for offices at the district attorney’s office. Monica had seniority and rated a corner cubbyhole somewhat larger than the rest. Her sole attempt at humanizing her work space was a framed Chagall lithograph that added a splash of color to the white and black of her diplomas.
Monica was working on a file when David entered, and she waved him toward a chair. There were two in front of her desk, and he took a stack of files off one and placed them on the floor, then glanced at the newspaper that was draped over the top file on the other chair. Monica looked up.
“I need Seals’s testimony and I’ll give him immunity to get it,” she said without ceremony.
David said nothing for a second. He was watching Monica’s face. When he was certain she was serious, he asked, “Why do you need his testimony?”
“Because he is the only one other than Zachariah Small who can testify that Sticks pulled the trigger up on the mountain. Without him Sticks will get off.
“We had an informant who heard the three of them talking after they shot Jessie. Sticks and Zack were bragging about shooting her, and it was pretty clear that it was Sticks who shot from the car.”
“Why don’t you use your informant?”
“He’s gone. He split shortly after we interviewed him. He’s a transient who was staying at the Gomes house when the boys were arrested. I guess he got scared when he realized that we wanted him to testify. I’ve got the police looking for him, but even if we found him, I’m not sure how much good he’d be to us. He has a police record and he’s a drunk.”
David was churning inside. He leaned forward slightly.
“We get complete immunity?”
“Yes.”
David stood up. “I’ll talk to my client.”
The guard led Tony Seals into the interview room at the county jail. The room was long and narrow, and a row of rickety wooden folding chairs was scattered along its length. There was one Formica-topped table at the far end. David sat in front of it, watching his client walk toward him.
“Buzz me when you’re through,” the guard said, pointing to a small black button set in a silver metal box under some steam pipes near the barred door. Then he slammed the door shut and David heard the key turn in the lock.
On visiting day this room was usually jammed full of anxious wives and girlfriends, talking in quiet tones to men they might not be making love to for a long time. But this was early on a weekday, and David and his client were alone.
T.S. smelled worse than the last time they had met. There was a body odor that prisoners at the county jail had that was unique and vile. It was the type of smell you could believe would never be scrubbed away.
David searched his client’s eyes as the gangly teenager shuffled toward him with a loose, puppetlike gait that made him look as if he had straw where bones should be. The eyes were vacant and as lifeless as his perpetual half smile.
“Hi, Mr. Nash,” T.S. said. He had a soft voice that rarely fluctuated with any emotion.
“Sit down, T.S.”
T.S. did as he was told. He always did. David wondered if he had ever initiated an action in his life. Monica was right. It had to have been Sticks and Zachariah. He was dealing with a boy who lacked free will. Another person’s creature who got from point A to point B by suggestion only.
“How’ve you been?”
“Okay, I guess.”
“I want to ask you a few questions, T.S., and I want truthful answers. This is important, so you have to be straight with me.”
“Sure, Mr. Nash.”
“Who shot Jessie when you were down at the hole? The first shot.”
“That was Zack.”
“You didn’t shoot her?”
David detected a flicker of fear.
“Honest, Mr. Nash. I didn’t never shoot her.”
“And up on the mountain? Who shot at her there?”
The boy’s right hand raised slowly and began to pick at a whitehead on his cheek. The tip of Seals’s tongue licked his lower lip, then darted back into his mouth.
“Well?”
“Uh…well, there was Zack. He done it first, right after we left her. Then we drove off some and Sticks said we should make sure. So we turned around and Sticks asked Zack if he could take a shot and Zack give him the gun.”
David watched T.S. closely. Remembering anything seemed to exhaust him. He wondered what it would be like to go through life with a brain that worked so slowly.
“T.S., did you ever shoot the gun?”
The hand dropped from the pimple and T.S. looked afraid.
“No, honest. They don’t say I done it, do they?”
“I want to know.”
“No, no. Zack said he’d let me try, but I was too bummed out. I said no and Sticks just took another shot.”
“What do you mean, bummed out?”
“I was tired,” T.S. said, sagging back in his chair, as if he had forgotten that he had been frightened only seconds before. He went back to worrying the pimple.
“T.S., just between us, if you hadn’t been tired, would you have shot her?”
T.S. considered the question and David wondered why he had asked it. What difference did it make? He had won. T.S. would be a free man after he testified at the trials of his former friends, and David would have earned his fee. Why did he need to know the truth about this idiot boy who would soon be at large again?
“Yeah, I guess,” he said. The pimple burst and white pus squeezed through his fingers. David felt cold and alone. The empty room was suddenly too close, and he wanted to get out.
“The district attorney has offered us a deal, T.S. She feels that she needs your testimony to convict Sticks and Zack. If you are willing to testify against them, she will grant you complete immunity. Do you know what that means?”
T.S. shook his head. His fingers were at work on another pimple.
“It means you go free. That they drop the charges against you for shooting Jessie.”
The fingers still worked, the stare was still vacant.
“I can go home?” he finally asked.
“After you’ve testified.”
“I have to testify in court?”
David nodded.
“Gee, I don’t know,” he said. Seals was trying to piece it together. David leaned back and let him think. He was floating and he needed some air. Dizzy. If he had some water.
“I guess it would be okay,” T.S. said finally. There was no excitement, no elation. David wondered if Seals even cared. For T.S. the world was a torment where everything was too complicated. He was a man made for prison where the rules and regulations set him free from the arduous task of having to make decisions.
“You’ll have to get on the witness stand in court and say exactly what happened, and you’ll have to take a liedetector test first, so the district attorney can be sure you’re being truthful. Will you do that?”
“If you say so,” the boy said. He had stopped picking his face apart and thought for a second. “I can really go home?”
“Yes, T.S.”
T.S. smiled, but only for a brief moment. Then he looked at David.
“You know, the guys in here said I was lucky to have you as my lawyer. They said you’d beat the rap for me.”
David stood to go. It was very warm in the narrow room and he needed air badly. He looked down at the idiot boy at the table and saw him back on the streets, the way he’d be in six months or a year. Back on drugs. Doing…what? Would he pull the trigger next time? Would there be a next time? David knew there would be, because he could see with his own eyes what Tony Seals was. His hands began to itch as if they were very dirty.